It’s the end of the year once more. Some people are excited about their new year resolutions, and others are exasperated with the cycle of setting goals that are never really achieved. There’s also the majority of people who, though they know are unlikely to achieve their goals, proceed to set them anyway. I’m guessing they are holding on to faith! Unfortunately, hope alone doesn’t get us anywhere.
I acknowledge the fact; New Year Resolutions are notable for being an epic fail. Regardless of that, brushing them off isn’t reasonable. You can rarely blame the goals. Planning is still as necessary as it has ever been since you still want to achieve those goals badly. The best solution then, is to strengthen your ability to achieve them, not discard them.
But why do we turn to ditch the very things we acknowledge to be imperative? Beyond any doubt, we don’t have a conscious intention to sabotage our growth or the growth of the things that matter to us. Here are two reasons why you seem to be crippling your progress.
Planning Reduces Anxiety
One paramount reason why we fail to follow through with our plans came as a huge surprise to me. Let’s say you join your family to celebrate doing the holidays, and everyone keeps making awful comments about how big you’ve become. You’re so depressed. Out of all these negative emotions, you decide to lose weight. You get right off to set your goals for the new year. You plan your meals, do a lot of research and pay for a gym membership for January. No need to be worried about your weight anymore, right? You’ve got it all under control.
That is the problem. When we set goals, make plans, or even take a tiny step towards achieving those goals, the anxiety that drove us to plan magically fades away. In our minds, planning and achieving our goals isn’t different. They are both fulfilling. Should we steer clear of setting goals to keep our anxieties high then? Of course not! I’ll share how to follow through with your plans later in this post.
We are Prolific Procrastinators
Another obvious but very difficult hindrance is our tendency to procrastinate. Writing down plans and throwing dates on the calendar is such an easy and fun thing to do. It’s the least we can do to help ourselves. Yet, in no time, we abandon those goals without a second thought. We watch the deadlines fly by and keep deceiving ourselves that we will get to it on a rescheduled date. Why is that? Our brains prefer instant gratification to long-term rewards.
Ever heard of The Ancient Problem of Akrasia? For centuries, human beings have been procrastinating. Even Socrates and Aristotle developed a word to describe this type of behaviour: Akrasia. Whenever you know what is right and yet you do something else, you are in the state of Akrasia. Your behaviour is against your better judgment, and you display a lack of self-control. Akrasia is what will prevent you from following through with what you have intended to do.
When you make plans for yourself, you are setting goals for your future self. It’s easier for our brains to be reasonable when we are envisioning ourselves in the future. The brain sees value in taking long-term actions. However, when the time comes to execute those plans, we are no longer making long-term decisions. Our brain is thinking about the present self and research has proven that, the present self loves instant gratification. When you set a new year resolution to wake up at 4 am every day, you can picture how much more time you have to yourself, and the ripple effect on your income. That will seem very reasonable to your brain, but when the alarm clock rings at 4 am and you’re still very sleepy, your brain has a decision to make for your present self. Should you sleep a little while longer or jump off the bed immediately? Snooze it is! Instant gratification is a delightful pleasure. This is one of the reasons why we keep falling into old habits.
My Proposed Mithridate: A Four-Step Framework To Becoming an Executor.
I came up with a four-step framework for ensuring our goals come to life. It is something I have decided to commit to in the upcoming year. I’ve chosen to call it the PAHE Planning Model.
Step 1 — Problem
“Our WHY is our purpose, cause, or belief… the driving force behind everything we do. Our HOWs are the actions we take when we are at our natural best to bring our WHY to life. Our WHATs are the tangible manifestation of our WHY, the actual work we do every day.” -Simon Sinek
Our subconscious mind knows the real reasons why we want something. Denying that is living in a fool’s paradise. Defining the true drive behind your goals will create a stable and long-lasting motivation and that is something you will need throughout the year.
Start by writing down the problem. List all the problems that you have. For each problem, write out why solving those problems is very crucial. You can then rephrase those problems into meaningful goals.
Step 2 — Actions
List out all the necessary actions you need to take to achieve your new goals. These actions include both one-off activities and habits you need to develop. More than writing down the actions, what you will need to do at this stage is to create “commitment devices” too. Commitment devices are the strategies that do one or more of these three things:
- Boost good behavior.
- Increase the obstacles or consequences of bad behavior.
- Reduce the effort required for good behavior.
They are systems of accountability you create to ensure you are always working on your goals, or at least, you are finding it almost effortless to.
You can control what you eat and stick to your diet by preparing weekly meals ahead of time and setting an alarm that alerts you to take your meals, so you don’t wait till you are hungry. Cravings hardly set in when you are full. For me, I have created a YouTube content calendar for my new channel so I don’t have to spend so much time worrying about content ideas. Your utmost priority is to find a way to automate your behavior beforehand rather than relying on your willpower at the moment.
Step 3 — Friction
The pain of doing the work is more bearable than the remorse and vexation of procrastinations. So why do we still procrastinate? You’ll realize that the work itself isn’t hard, starting it is. At the Friction stage, you will have to identify everything that can restrain your actions and then get rid of them one after the other. Work on reducing the size of your habits. If you want to go for a run every morning, for instance, you can sleep in your workout clothes and leave your sneakers very close to your bed. Once you wake up in the morning, you wouldn’t have to think about what to wear. You jump right into your sneakers, brush your teeth, and set off for a run. This way, you would have eliminated one eminent friction — dressing up.
Step 4 — Emotions.
“Life is easy when you live it the hard way… and hard when you try to live it the easy way.”
-Dave Kekich
Don’t give ear to your emotions. Really! The earlier we accept that life is hard and enduring the frustrations that come with our efforts is the only way out, the better for us. We must make it a habit to check in on ourselves multiple times in the day. Ask yourself: Am I resisting all temptations and instant gratification thrown at me at the moment?
The greatest part of this transformational challenge is to live in the consciousness of your goals at each moment. Back in 2018, when I developed a bad habit of randomly scrolling through my phone for several minutes, I decided to do something new. Set 16 alarms in the day (one for every hour in the day). The alarms came with one message: Is this what you’ll rather be doing? While those around me found it quite irritating, it did help me get over that bad habit very quickly. It felt as if someone was reminding me of my priorities so often, I barely had the burden of making the decision not to waste time on my phone.
Staying Consistent on Your Goals
It is very hard to achieve anything in life when our primary value is to feel comfortable. People who voluntarily make life harder for themselves tend to do better. Your new year goals are going to come with a new set of challenges. Acknowledge that and embrace them as opportunities.
Accept the urges that you have. Don’t be too hard on yourself. You are only human. What you should rather do, is to try your best to put structures in place that make it easier to get over those tendencies. You should hardly ever make decisions around actions that will contribute to your goals ‘at the moment’.
Don’t forget to reward yourself often. Appreciate the little efforts that you make. You are your number one cheerleader. Don’t lose your cheer!
